A couple has had to go through an ordeal that has lasted seven years after their luggage was lost on the way from Palermo to Verona. Added to the inconvenience over the loss is a judicial process that has cost them four lawsuits and is still ongoing. After two unfavorable sentences for the traveler, revoked by the Court of Cassation, a new appeal will be held, according to the media. .
It all started on September 21, 2018, when the couple flew from Palermo to Verona. When they arrived at their destination, however, their luggage was missing, so they were forced to buy clothes to replace the lost ones. However, jurisdiction was questioned from the beginning in the process, so it was initially ruled that the Irish courts had jurisdiction, as the airline’s headquarters are located there.
Because of this, the Verona justice of the peace who handed down the sentence in the first instance ruled against the passenger. This decision was overturned in a 2021 appeal which confirmed the Italian judge’s jurisdiction. However, they did not receive any type of compensation since they established that according to the information provided by the travelers it was not possible to quantify the damages.
The case then came before the Court of Cassation, which upheld the appeal and even went so far as to reprimand the previous judges. In this way, he ordered a new trial to quantify the damages on an equitable basis, to which the traveler is entitled, according to the Italian media.
“Although the luggage had been lost due to the airline’s breach of contract, the judge did not proceed with the equitable assessment of the economic damages, having recognized the impossibility of quantifying them due to a cause attributable to the traveler, who had relied on the witness statement of his wife, which was considered insufficient to quantify the amount of compensation,” according to the Supreme Court.
The decision, the ruling continues, “is erroneous with regard to the lack of assessment of pecuniary damages.” “The only way to assess damages is through equity, since requiring specific information about the contents of a bag is unreasonable. From this perspective, the appeal judge’s reasoning seems truly contradictory: after suggesting that it was impossible to quantify the damages, he ended up declaring that equitable assessment was not possible. This contradicts the principle established by this Court according to which, if ‘it is possible to determine the amount based on the evidence…’, it is incomprehensible to maintain that equitable assessment is impossible, because it amounts to to affirm that the greater does not include the lesser,” he concluded.
“Having obtained evidence of the damages, it must be considered that the appeal judge wrongly refrained from making an equitable determination, invoking as a pretext the alleged absence of the elements on which to base said determination, when it is evident that the luggage contains clothing, underwear, perfumes and accessories in quantities consistent with the duration of the trip,” the Court of Cassation finally establishes.
It is now up to a new courtroom in Verona to establish a quantification of the damages.
